70Post

Joe - Looking excellent! I think Houston Joe is referring to the vacuum "canister" mounted on the front/P side of the carb, not the carb dashpot that I mentioned to you (located on the bracket on the intake @the Dside/front area of carb).

costpenn

Don't have the "correct" drums yet - keeping a lookout for a set of bells, but again, I'm not so sure that both types weren't used.

Yes, just checked my texts and have the specs. Will forward this morning.

Joe

70Post

I'm thinking the same thing as Joe - that both types of drums were used on the '70 cars. Seen too many lower mileage cars over the years with the "finned" drums to not think that those were also used.

Eddie Hansen

Excellent thread, thank you, really enjoyed getting caught up on this build great work as well

jensenracing77

I had one extra set till I picked up the W-27. It did not have them so I am using them on it.

costpenn

Status Report Only - no actual work (0 hours)

Still no definitive answer on when my frame will be coming back. I am a standstill till then, but have still been making progress on parts not being done by me

Got my NOS '70 gas cap from Ron Memmer. Is the right one, but has some corrosion/discoloring right in the center of it. The rivets aren't plated, so to dissasemble and replate would be the only option. Will probably wind up leaving like in the below picture.

Chris has almost finished pressing in the front and rear control arm bushings, and is about to get started on the lower ball joints. Should have back by mid next week.

Brought the passenger side seat into the garage to begin cleaning it. This car has the original seat covers, door panels, headliner and carpeting that I am going to try to reuse. Found a few small scuffs on the seat back panel, and more importantly a crappy repair to the head rest beading. Opinions are welcome about whether to leave the seat alone (I am replacing the seat back and side panel chrome piping, the headrest escutcheons, the seat back release button and adjusting *****.) or try to fix. I am going to be showing this car at National events and will be calling out that all the interior textiles are original - would thus be considered a plus as opposed to recovering/repacing everything?

Magna86

I would leave the seat as is and not try to repair that or recover everything. Its part of the history and shows originality. Also sent you a PM about some bell drums.

Johnd

When it comes to the seats, people will notice this as much as the paint on the car. When my brother did his chevelle he reused all the pieces you mentioned, and it looks like crap. He also tried having the headrest recovered, then went with the reproductions, and they too looked like crap. If you look at my build thread I redid every last piece of the front and rear seats, including springs and padding, in total I spent $1500 on parts, and did the labor myself with some emails to Ben (member of the board). If you look at my build thread there are some before and after shots.

costpenn

Thanks for sharing your experience. I will make sure each individual piece is OK before reinstalling it.

Johnd

BTW - your thread really keeps me motivated to restore mine the correct way. When you are done, I am sure you are going to win a ton of trophies

costpenn

John, the nice comments I receive here on CO - like yours - will always mean more to me than any trophies because all you guys KNOW what you are looking at - thanks!!

Johnd

Your seats are in much better condition than mine were. Below are a couple of before and after shots

dc2x4drvr

Joe,Your seats looked good when I saw them, don't know about the headrest crack, hard to fix..

costpenn

Lance, working with Patton on the headrest crack. He has some good ideas about fixing it.

costpenn

A really nice day in Texas - had to get in a little work (2 hours)

Got my control arms back from Chris after he installed the new bushings and pressed in the LBJ's. He really did me a favor by using some correct case finish bushings on one upper control arm. The Rock Auto bushings had one side the correct grey phosphate color, but the other side was black. He had a set in inventory so thanks AGAIN Drieling. I'll have to mask off the lower bushings and paint them in the dark gray. They are a mish mash of colors.

While Chris was over, we turned the passenger seat over to look at the condition of the underside. These seats had never been out of the car, so we were looking to see what I was going to have to do some freshening of the seat underside and tracks. Turns out nothing but the rear 4 inches or so of the track is painted black, the rest of the track, big spring and other pieces except the small spring were not painted or plated. Going to see if I can just lightly steel wool or Dremel tool the surface rust off and leave the pieces nude as the good Doc intended. The upholstery on the bottom looks really good to me with nothing coming undone. Will just clean as best as I can and reassemble.

Started painting my body mount bushings. Started another thread on the topic about two different greens called out for in the ILT kit.

dc2x4drvr

Your control arms are beautiful...

TK-65

The bushings were painted for no other reason than identification. The paint cracked when tightened down on the assembly line. And flaked off after a while. So dont worry about cracking, thats how they looked.

costpenn

Something fun and tangible (1 hour)

Finished reassembling the upper control arm hardware - including the original ball joints. The only replacement boots that will work are in the name brand Moog ball joints. Will torque down the end nuts after they are installed.

costpenn

Used Moog K5108's - the first set I looked at had Moog in raised letters on the rubber - the second set I found at an old parts store here in Carrollton had the smooth boots.

costpenn

Good News Today!! (Zero work time)

Just received a text message with a pic of the frame in final paint from the painter. I think it will be available for pick up next week. Perfect timing since the real, true, last thing I have to do is get the Moog springs in the proper finishes. There is a LOT of disagreement on this topic on the web. After researching, I am going with the black paint on the rears that came on the springs, and on the front going with yet another specialty Rustoleum metallic finish paint. I arrived at this by taking a spring and painting each one of the coils with a different metal looking color, and then selecting the one that to me looks the most like nude spring steel. (I took a spring and removed some paint to see what it looked like - the steel was a lot darker than I expected) I picked the third from the left. Interestingly, the one that looked the worst to me was the Eastwood's Detail Gray bare steel paint!

costpenn

Springs done (?) (1 hour)

Went ahead and painted the front springs in the new color described in my last post. Think it came out well, and applied the ILT tags, but I think the fronts are upside down.

Comments are always appreciated.

NDERISE

springs look very nice, are these your original spring
thanks ray

costpenn

Ray they are not the originals. My front left spring was so tired it would not stand up straight no matter how I placed it after I removed it from the car.

These are the "stock" Moog replacement springs. I went with the A/C non HD springs up front because I don't like how long it takes the HD versions to settle down to get to the correct stance and car height. That is one thing that ruins brand new restos for me - the "motorboat" rake that cars can get from some springs.

Eddie Hansen

Springs came out great... I know how my moog springs came and the paint on them was horrible, took time to repaint etc, and they didnt come out half as nice as yours so that looks like a ton of effort

NDERISE

here are the inspection mark I have pics of. the first two pics are of the intermediate steering shaft, and the other two are of the steering column to fire wall support. my upper control arm bushing shafts had xxx,s and oo's on the bottom of them, thay were in yellow, which I did not take pics of and I regret that i did not take pics. my diff. I blasted the housing and did not see any marks on it

costpenn

Started front seat cleaning refurb (1 1/2 hours)

Frame was not ready today, but it is looking like Monday. Looking forward to finally seeing some stuff go back together.

Today I pulled the seat back and lower side skirt panels off the passenger seat. Like previously mentioned, they are all the originals and are nice enought to reuse. These simply need to be cleaned with a gentle detergent and the right tension bristle brush - stiff enough to get inside the grain, but soft enough to not scratch or otherwise damage the surface grain or color.

Next pulled off the seat tracks. They have some light surface corrosion which I will lightly wire wheel off, and then go over with a coarse scotch brite to restore the original bare steel texture. The ends where they turn down - front and back - are in fact painted a dull black, but it looks like they were placed on a surface and painted the same way as they are when mounted on the car. The part of the turn downs that face downward when they were installed are nude - no one bothered to turn turn them over to paint the side that you will never see after they were installed.

Next moved onto the seat bottom sheet metal. These structures also have a little corrosion. To not damage any of the fabric areas, I simply went over with the coarse scotch brite. Came out looking pretty good - in the pic below the LH side is done, the RH side is untouched.

Next is to strip and refinish the springs, the seat adjuster handle, skirt attaching screws, deep clean and treat the seating surfaces, and reassemble with new molded piping, seat release button and head rest escutcheons.

costpenn

Ah, one front seat finished (2 1/2 hours)

It's nice to finish a major piece. Today I finished reassembling the passenger's side bucket seat. Pics below, but stuff done today:

Finished removing surface rust from frame undercarriage with coarse scotch brite pad

Wirewheeled and scotchbrited the tracks.

Wirewheeled and painted in the Bronze Rubbed Metallic paint the big spring.

Hand painted the adjusting handle return spring in yellow paint marking pen so as to mimic the original unfinished rough paint look the OE part had.

Masked and painted the track feet in a SEM black bumper paint. This seemed to match the original better than anything else I had. I left the underside of the feet bare as my originals were.

Painted the adjusting handle in the Eastwood's Silver Cad paint - left the big pivot rivet nude.

Washed in the tub the original side skirts and seat back. Soaked down with a light coat of Armor All.

Spent a lot of time cleaning all the seat vinyl surfaces with Tuff Stuff and a medium stiffness brush. Lots of nasty goo came out of the material.

Reinstalled the seat tracks and the springs. Also installed the seat trim piping (had to trim about an inch off every end - I thought this stuff was exact fit) replaced the side skirt screws with AMK product, cleaned and detallied the screws that hold the seat back to the seat (5 in total)

Installed the repo escutcheons and seat release buttons.

Installed the seat adjusting ****. Another piece that is repo crap - does anyone know why it fits so lousy?

Not bad for 45 year old materials. Hope the driver's side comes out as nice.

costpenn

A couple more

Eddie Hansen

That is some great work, looks awesome

NDERISE

u said it right your seat looks excellent for 45 years old, cant believe how good a shape the seat frames are in. good save

Johnd

Wow - those came out amazing... Mine were all chewed by mice

costpenn

Other bucket finished (4 hours)

Finished the driver's side today. Did everything exactly the same as the passenger's side. Seating surfaces are just as nice, but there is a very narrow crack in one of the bottom pleat seams about 3/4 of an inch long. I filled in the crack's edges with black vinyl dye paint and now it is almost impossible to see.

Unfortunately, the plastic seat back on this one is scratched/scuffed up a little more than I am comfortable with. I might have to replace the pair, but the side skirts are still good.

costpenn

Jon, some mice had got in the inside of the seat back part of the rear seat, but did not chew through any of the vinyl.

Eddie Hansen

Dang varmints, need toleave some cheese out for those poor boys, in a spring trap lol

I do know a hit cat in jersey, take care of those fellas for ya, prob cost no more than a can a sardines

costpenn

Whoa, whoa, that cat prefers to be thought of as a Senior Security Analyst - hit cat sounds so "violent"' and you know there is no such thing as "Made" cats dont't you?

Boilerz25

Great work on the seats. I cannot believe how good the covers look. I am in the process of completely rebuilding my seats and it wont be easy. I had to tear apart the frames and sandblast them along with new springs. You lucked out.

Sean

costpenn

No work today, but frame is home (0 hours)

Picked it up today. Am very happy with the finish on all the areas that show. I left the top surface of the frame - the side that goes up against the body and can't be seen after reassembly - not smoothed over. Paint is Matte black epoxy.

costpenn

And we're off on the assembly process (4 hours)

Spent the last few evenings getting all my parts found for the frame reassembly. I thought I had lost the rear coil spring insulators, but they somehow had been misfiled with refinished interior pieces. Spent 2 !@$&! hours finding them.

Began with reinstalling the rear end assembly. No major issues, but I used 3 shims on one side and 4 on the other that go between the sway bar and the control arm. Since the ones that were on the car were a fused, rusted mass this might be correct.

Bolt directions are per as they were when dissasembled since the rear end had never been out - it pretty much matched what is in the PIM. Installed most of the ILT detailing labels. The rear spring tag is correct for 70 442 but the CSM says there is a different code for with A/T which is not in their kit. Will have to figure out a way of making the correct ones.

This weekend will be front suspension and steering reassembly, then fuel & brake lines. Will cocoon everything and then return to the painter for body installation and stripe application.

NDERISE

yep, it is gratifying to see the chassis start to come together after all the hours u have put into it, i love the torque and insp. marks u have put on the components it really bring it out the originality, looks superb.
ray

dc2x4drvr

Looks great Joe!